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The Psychology Of Hedonic Adaptation
Combating Hedonic Adaptation
The process of hedonic adaptation can be minimized, if not eliminated.
- Uneventful everyday routines are the ultimate breeding ground for hedonic adaptation. Variety can help maintain and even increase the excitement and joy that accompanies positive life experiences.
- Gratitude and appreciation for the blessings in one's life can also combat hedonic adaptation.
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Hedonic Adaptation
... also referred to as hedonic treadmill, is defined as "the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes" - Positive Psychology Program.
After a while, people become used to changes in their lives. The enjoyment or unhappiness that follows certain life events gradually wears off, returning each person to their "default" emotional state.
Elements of Hedonic Adaptation
- Shifting adaptation levels: When an individual experiences a slight emotional up or down, and then returns to his or her default level of happiness.
- Desensitization: When an individual becomes desensitized to a circumstance or situation they no longer have the same reactions that another person might experience.
- Sensitization: When an individual is sensitized to a certain situation, they get used to something that they were not previously accustomed to.
Hedonic Adaptation Critics
Critics view the hedonic adaptation tendency as a generalization that fails to take potentially shifting factors into account.
- Significant life events such as loss of employment or the end of a major relationship can change one's original level of contentment.
- Negative events are often more significant than positive ones.
- Consuming certain medication may also alter the set level of happiness in a person who has mental illness or other clinical problems.
Reasonings behind hedonic adaptation
People become used to whatever changes are causing their increase in happiness. Over time, the initial excitement of the thing that happened wears off with a return to the "set level of happiness."
Someone who undergoes a positive experience with desirable offshoots can shift their levels of expectation. It then becomes their new normal.
Combating Hedonic Adaptation
The process of hedonic adaptation can be minimized, if not eliminated.
- Uneventful everyday routines are the ultimate breeding ground for hedonic adaptation. Variety can help maintain and even increase the excitement and joy that accompanies positive life experiences.
- Gratitude and appreciation for the blessings in one's life can also combat hedonic adaptation.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
Hedonic adaptation
Hedonic adaptation refers to people’s common tendency to return to a determined level of happiness regardless of life’s ups and downs.
Hedonic adaptation is often referred to as “the hedonic ...
Examples of Hedonic Adaptation
- People who win the lottery are likely to revert to their original levels of happiness after the novelty of the win has worn off.
- It is also true for those who are in major accidents. People generally tend to return to their pre-accident levels of happiness after a period.
- Research has found that the first bite of something delicious is experienced as more pleasurable than the subsequent bites.
How Much Control We Have
Researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky has examined this set-point:
A full 50 percent of our happiness set-point is due to genetics. 10 percent is affected primarily by circumstances like where we were born and to whom. 40 percent is subject to our influence.
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The status shift
We take on more
When we reach each new Utopia we're neither closer nor further from a true life of leisure. Rather than offload work, we choose equilibrium, absorbing our gains so as to take on more.
Working less
If we ever want to reach a workless society — or at least one where we work less — it won’t do to rely on dispassionate historical or technological forces to bring it about.
Instead, we’ll have to get it for ourselves.
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Count your blessings
Spend 5 to 10 minutes at the end of each day writing in detail about three things that went well that day, large or small, and also describing why you think they happened.
Mental subtraction
You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.
Consider the many ways in which important, positive events in your life—such as a job opportunity or educational achievement—could have never taken place, and then reflecting on what your life would be like without them.
Savor
We have a tendency to adapt to pleasurable things—a phenomenon called “hedonic adaptation”—and appreciate them less and less over time.
We can interrupt this process by trying the Give it Up practice, which requires temporarily giving up pleasurable activities and then coming back to them later, this time with greater anticipation and excitement.
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